Top 20 Books on Creating Intentional Organizational Culture
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Here’s my list of influencers on organizational culture. This list is intended for leaders who know culture is important and want some new perspectives, and to think bigger about possibilities, choices and practices.
Inspiration, shared vision, purpose. Telling the story of what are we trying to create together and why. Creating systems that align energy, foster excellence and great teamwork. These are the results created by leaders that pay attention to culture.
Very often, especially in startups and scale ups, consideration of culture is left as an afterthought, if attended to at all. The organization may accrue cultural debt, people systems debt, along with technical debt. While this may be intentional in the quest to get to market first, or prioritize revenue generation, in the longer term it can be a deal breaker. It is possible to do both at the same time. The intentional cultivation of a positive culture can make your organization more successful; it differentiates you, gives energy and helps to solve problems like recruiting talent, and quickly pivoting when needed.
To create culture, leaders and managers can develop not only skills and competencies in things like people management, and strategy, but also develop their mental and emotional capacities. The overall mindset shifts from the individual to the collective.
Inspiring leadership is not only individual, its collective. As Peter Senge described back in the 1990s in The 5th Discipline, leadership that is collective leads to a learning culture on the organizational level.
BOOKS
“A learning organization is a community that has the capacity to shape its future.”
— Peter Senge
(in alphabetical order)
1) Dominic Barton, Dennis C Carey, Ram Charan Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First, Business, Organizational Culture and People Practices
2) Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan Execution: the discipline of getting things done - how people, strategy and operations are linked
3) Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall Nine Lies About Work
4) Clayton Christensen The Innovator's Dilemma a key text on the theory of disruption and customer centric innovation
5) Nick Craig Leading from Purpose
6) Stephen Frost Building an Inclusive Organization: Leveraging the Power of a Diverse Workforce
7) Heidi K Grant Smart Collaboration
8) Geert Hofstede Cultures and Organizations
9) Lisa Lahey An Everyone Culture: becoming a deliberately developmental organization
10) Frederic Laloux Reinventing Organizations
11) Erin Meyer the Culture Map
12) Eric Ries The Lean Startup
13) Otto Scharmer Theory U
14) Peter M. Senge The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization
15) Simon Sinek Start with Why
16) Paul J. Zak The Trust Factor
BOOKS ABOUT SPECIFIC ORGANIZATION APPROACHES
17) Laszlo Bock Work Rules about Google
18) Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace Creativity Inc about Pixar
19) Patty McCord Powerful on creating Netflix culture of freedom and responsibility
20) Tony Hsieh Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose the Zappos story
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
(not books! I realize not everyone likes to read as much as I do…)
IDEO Creative Difference tool
IDEO blog piece Why Workplace Culture Matters (and how to build a good one)
Harvard Business Review The Culture Factor - a resource package for determining current culture and shaping it to strategy
Harvard Business Review The Business Case for Curiosity
Adam Grant podcast Worklife
Netflix famous Culture Deck and Reid Hoffman’s podcast Masters of Scale interview with Reed Hastings (Netflix CEO)